


In Potentia

by ZaliaChimera



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous Relationships, Anger, Angst, Arguing, Canonical Character Death, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Introspection, M/M, Sad, Spoilers, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:54:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28783020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZaliaChimera/pseuds/ZaliaChimera
Summary: Resurrections don't always go as planned. Sometimes things hold you back. And sometimes that guilt has to be confronted.Zolf in the Garden of Erlik.
Relationships: Zolf Smith & Oscar Wilde, Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Comments: 24
Kudos: 47





	In Potentia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brinnanza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brinnanza/gifts).



The trees are thick here, and Zolf feels very alone. He doesn’t know where the others are; though he thinks he can hear them, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, he can’t see them, and when he calls out they fall silent. 

He’s stopped calling out. 

It can’t have been that long that he’s been walking through this forest of trees so huge and strange. He isn’t tired. He isn’t hungry. But when he looks back, there’s no sign of the camp fires, and when he peers up through the branches, there is no sky. In his soul he feels that this is not a place where his body’s sense of time can be relied upon.

He has to keep moving forward. Alone if necessary. It’s always necessary. In the end, the only person you can rely on is yourself. Needing people, relying on people, is a weakness that he can’t afford. And so he puts one foot in front of the other, and keeps walking.

A hundred steps, or a thousand, ten thousand? He doesn’t know. Keeps trudging through the impossible forest, glaive gripped tight in his hands, and spells on his tongue. In the back of his mind, he knows that he is waiting. Knows that he is looking for something… someone… 

No… no, that isn’t why he’s here. The forest knows what you want, that’s what they’d been told. But you can’t trust it. He has a mission. He has a mission and he has to complete it. It’s all he has left.

“It’s always about the mission.”

The voice is cool and amused and freezes Zolf’s blood to hear it. He stops in his tracks, and does not look around.

“You know it has to be.” He cannot afford to be distracted now.

There’s a laugh and it is sharp and cold like Zolf had never heard him. It sounds alien, but so familiar at once.

He takes a step. Another. He has to find the others.

“Why do you care?” Wilde asks. 

And there he is in front of Zolf, just out of reach (always just out of reach). There is no comforting illusion, no younger Wilde, happy and carefree. This is Wilde as Zolf had seem him last in the world of the living; pale and scarred, with blood staining the front of his shirt and trickling from his lips. He looks exhausted and drawn and angry.

“Of course I care,” Zolf snaps, and he tries to walk on, because he has to, can’t let himself get drawn into this. He _can’t_.

“About the mission,” Wilde says, and Zolf can read every bit of accusation in those short words. “Always the mission.”

“You of all people should understand that,” Zolf replies and he starts walking again. Just keep going. Keep trudging onwards and eventually things have to get better, right? Something has to change and this is the best lead they’ve had in years and-

“Does it really matter though?” Wilde asks and he’s so close by that Zolf startles, swears he can feel breath against his ear. “I mean really, what are you expecting to happen? You save the day, get a medal, and then what? Retire? A nice little cottage somewhere? Hah, you wouldn’t make it a week.”

It sends a chill down Zolf’s spine. His grip around the glaive tightens. They’d talked about it once, on a particularly stormy night, when the sake had been flowing freely. Talked about what they’d do afterwards, if there was an afterwards. There’d been something beneath the words then that Zolf couldn’t put a name to, some fledgling emotion, delicate and new and full of promise.

“And you strangled it in the crib,” Wilde says from right in front of him. 

Zolf takes a shuddering breath, and another, and meets the shade’s eyes. “Wilde, you _died_.”

The words fall into the cold air, harsh and hurt. And Wilde laughs. 

It is not a nice sound. It grates on Zolf’s flesh like cracking ice and splintered wood, and the blood spills from his lips to spatter on the ground. It goes on for far too long. Long enough that Zolf has pushed himself a few more steps. He has to keep going. He has to finish the mission or what’s the point?

“Coward.” The word is spat, venomous, stripped of all wit and humour, leaving just the bones behind.

“You died,” Zolf says again, and lets the exhaustion creep in.

“And you could have changed that,” Wilde says.

Zolf’s throat tightens, his lungs feel like lead. He runs his thumb against a near imperceptible flaw in the handle of the glaive. 

The last time he’d seen Wilde, he had been young and angry and beautiful, sipping bourbon on a Parisian balcony.

The last time he’d seen Wilde, he had failed.

“You had the chance,” Wilde continues relentlessly. “Magic beyond your imagining, freely offered, and you couldn’t even bring me _back_ because of your stubborn pride.”

“It isn’t like that!” Zolf snaps and he turns around, glaive levelled at the shade. But the shade isn’t there.

“What is it like then, Zolf?” Wilde hisses right next to him. He thinks he can feel a touch against his cheek, cold fingers that run against his skin and beard with a gentleness that makes him squeeze his eyes shut against the ache in his chest. “Azu brought Carter back from the abyss, and Cel saved Sassrra. They barely know each other. But me? After everything…”

“I had to give you the choice!” he says. “You had to choose and you chose to stay there. It’s not- I wasn’t gonna force you.”

“Liar,” Wilde says and Zolf feels it in his bones. “You always lie. Is that what you’ve been telling yourself? Is that what you told yourself when you left Sasha and Hamid in Prague? That leaving them was best for them? That you were somehow being _selfless_?”

“I-” The words stick in his throat, mind racing as he remembers that conversation, every nuance of what he’d said and thought and the doubt creeps in, thick and sour.

He tries to remember what they’d been told; the forest plays with you, the forest doesn’t always show what is real, it draws on you, your thoughts and needs and fears.

That isn’t reassuring when grief and guilt are welling up inside him, threatening to split him open and tear him apart. Maybe he should have died in the airship crash, him instead of Wilde. Might have been more useful that way. 

“Pathetic,” Wilde says, and Zolf’s breath hitches and cracks with the ache and pain of two years of hell. “Even now, you won’t admit it. You couldn’t do it even to save my life. Too stubborn and proud.”

“That’s not it!” Zolf says, and he rounds on Wilde, faces him, that beautiful blood-stained figure. 

“What was it then?” Wilde taunts. “For a cleric of hope, you don’t seem to have much.”

It hurts. He feels like he’s two years ago, screaming at the ocean and having Poseidon empty him out, leave him raw and hollow and lost. How long it had taken to rebuild that tiny stubborn flame inside himself. 

But he can still feel it, small and guttering but clinging to the embers of faith and trust and love. He’d never had much of them.

“Or maybe you’re just incapable of caring. Did your god rip your heart out along with your magic?”

“That isn’t- that isn’t it!” he protests, though it sounds weak to his own ears, but when has that ever stopped him from arguing?

“Then what is it?” Wilde snaps, and it isn’t a question, it’s a command. 

And Zolf cracks, feels the words bubbling up like the blood on Wilde’s lips. 

“I was scared.”

The words fall into the darkness, soaked in by countless dreaming trees and Zolf knows the truth of them.

Wilde watches him, expression flat and unforgiving.

“I was scared,” he repeats. “I’m always scared. I saw you there, in that place, and I- what if I said the wrong thing? What if I brought you back just to die or _worse_? Everyone else I- that I care for seems to end up in a bad way.”

Wilde doesn’t reply, and Zolf lets out a slow breath and meets Wilde’s eyes. “What if I brought you back, and you hated me for it? If I brought you back and then _failed_?”

He doesn’t think he could have borne that, having Wilde look at him with disgust or hatred. He wonders at what moment Wilde had become the centre of his world. 

He wonders what he does when the core of his world is gone.

“And that’s why I didn’t say. Couldn’t say it,” Zolf admits, and it feels more of a confessional than anything he’d done in the priesthood. 

“Couldn’t say what?” Wilde says flatly. “You’re still hiding, still _lying_.”

He can’t. He can’t say it. Can’t make it real. He’s spent the last few days expecting to wake up from a nightmare, and how can he make it real? 

He tries to keep walking, but fingers grab his wrist, surprisingly solid but cold as the snow outside the forest. They hold him fast and Zolf can’t bring himself to pull away. 

“You can’t run away forever,” Wilde hisses, and Zolf knows that tone. It’s the one that comes before he knifes someone in the back or slits their throat. He’d never wanted to hear it aimed at him. “I’m not surprised though. You’ve always been good running away.”

He flinches and the grip tightens on his wrist, hard enough to bruise if the hand holding him was real. It feels real.He recognises the callouses. 

“Couldn’t say _what_ , Zolf?” Wilde asks. Beneath the cold there’s something else there, a hunger, a desperation that cuts worse than any anger. “Surely you can tell a dead man.”

He can’t, he can’t speaking the words makes it real, makes it so much worse now that it means nothing. 

But Wilde is dead. His body cold and when they return, Zolf will have to decide what to do with it and endure the sympathetic glances and worried words and conversations that hush whenever he comes near. Wilde is dead, and if he can’t say it now… 

“I need you,” he says quietly. “I need you, Wilde.”

The forest is silent. 

“I _need_ you, and I failed. And I don’t know what to do now.” He gives a laugh that sticks like rust in his throat. “Finish the mission, I guess. Never had much beyond that anyway.”

But maybe he could have.

“Are you going to kill me now?” he asks. He deserves it.

“Whyever would I do that?” Wilde asks. “Seems an awful waste. And they need all the help they can get.” His voice sounds softer, that anger lanced from it. 

“Because you should! You deserve vengeance, you deserve to hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, Zolf,” Wilde says softly, and those words hurt more than anything he could have done physically. “I couldn’t hate you. Not even now. And it isn’t about deserving.”

He won’t cry. He doesn’t deserve to cry, but gods he wants to. That makes it so much worse. He deserves that hatred!

The hand around his wrist loosens and Zol mourns its loss until there’s a touch against his cheek, a hand that tilts his head up. Wilde is… different. The blood is gone, and he looks much like he had in Japan. Subdued but honest, dark circles around his eyes, and that scar twisting with the small smile on his lips.

“What is it about then?” Zolf asks.

Wilde shrugs. “It’s about what you need.”

What he needs… If you go in seeking absolution… that’s what the druid had said. Guess he was more in need of that than he’d thought. Too used to walling it off into that dark space in his soul.

“I miss you,” Zolf says. Because why not? He’s already bared more of his soul than he’d ever intended. “There was something… not sure what I’m gonna do now.”

“You finish the mission,” Wilde replies with that wry twist of his lips that makes Zolf want to roll his eyes and touch the scar and kiss him all at once. He wishes he’d found out what that was like. 

“And after that?” 

“You live, I suppose.”

He looks so sad, and Zolf doesn’t know if it’s really Wilde, or just some shade drawn from his own mind, but he can’t _leave_ him looking like that. He grabs him by the collar, like he had back on the airship, before things had gone to hell. Drags him down so they’re face to face, and then rests his forehead against Wilde’s. He likes the way he startles. Feels real. Maybe it’s just nice to know he remembers that much of Wilde’s mannerisms. 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for this, and I’m sorry we don’t get to find out what this was.”

Wilde sighs. Zolf would swear he can feel breath on his lips. “Important. That’s what it is. You know it doesn’t mean less because it’s over.”

He can hear voices, Hamid, Azu, Cel, out in the trees and he curses them for a minute. He could stay here, he thinks madly for a second. Lie down and let this forest take him. 

“You’ve never been the type to do that,” Wilde says. “Go to them.”

Zolf’s tongue flicks over his lips, and he glances over towards where he can hear the voices, and then back at Wilde. “Will I see you again?”

Wilde’s expression flickers between grief and pain and love. He already seems less solid somehow. He leans in and presses his lips against Zolf’s forward, a final, gentle, benediction. 

“Finish the mission, Zolf,” he says. “And then… be happy.”

And then he turns and walks away.

“Wait!” Zolf says, and reaches for him.

“Zolf? Zolf!” 

Hamid’s voice and Zolf takes a breath, tries to school his face before he turns to face him. 

“Zolf, I thought we’d lost you.”

Zolf shrugs. “It’s a weird place. You alright?”

Hamid nods. “I keep thinking I see things but… nothing bad. Not yet. What about you? You look-”

Zolf can see him warring between honestly and diplomacy. Zolf knows he looks like hell. He doesn’t think he remembers how to look any other way. 

“I’m-” He glances back over his shoulder. Maybe he expects to see Wilde there, a watchful ghost, but there’s nothing but trees, and the lingering feeling of lips against his forehead. “I’m not fine,” he says quietly. He winces inwardly at the flicker of surprise in Hamid’s eyes but that’s something to deal with later. “I’ll survive until we’re out of here. Can’t pass up the best lead we’ve had.”

“Right…” Hamid says. 

Zolf is already walking back to where the others are. It’s a relief to see them. They’re good people. He owes it to them to be strong. ...he owes it to them to be honest. 

He can hear Hamid running to catch up, and he pauses to let him catch up instead of walking away.


End file.
